94 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



as it wished, and was given representation on the Senate of the new 

 university and from its teachers examiners might be chosen. 



In 1876 the government granted the University of Halifax a 

 charter,^^ and in the hope of being freed from the giving of denomina- 

 tional grants, gave it a modest grant. Acadia, Mt. Allison, King's, 

 St. Francis Xavier and St. Mary's received the proposal with favour. 

 A section of Dalhousie's stafif and students were coldly critical of the 

 "paper" university, predicted debased standards and "cheap" 

 degrees. They claimed that more teaching was needed, not more 

 examinations and cheaper degrees. In a sense they were right, but 

 they had not the vision to see that this university might in time 

 become a truly provincial institution, receiving provincial support, 

 making teaching in the Arts and Sciences its chief business, and 

 gathering within its fold professional schools of Law, Medicine, 

 Dentistry, Engineering, Pharmacy, Education and Agriculture. 



In Winnipeg the University of Manitoba, beginning in like manner 

 in 1878, grew from a purely examining and degree conferring institu- 

 tion first into a teaching School of Science, then of Arts and Science, 

 then a cluster of professional schools, until it emerged from all the 

 limitations of the first compromise into a large and vigorous univer- 

 sity. With surprising fidelity does Manitoba reproduce the more 

 notable features of the University of Toronto, which, after fifty years 

 of wandering in the wilderness, beset by foes without and mutiny 

 within, weakened by privation, and depressed by neglect, entered 

 into the sunshine of public favour and became one of the great uni- 

 versities in the Overseas Dominions of the British Empire. 



The shock of the failure of the union movement in Nova Scotia 

 paralysed the interest of the public in higher education and retarded 

 for a generation university development in the Maritime Provinces. 

 Nova Scotia established "Free" schools in 1864, Ontario in 1871. 

 Within a score of years Ontario witnessed the State's full accept- 

 ance of its responsibility for higher, as well as elementary, educa- 

 tion, while Nova Scotia, fifty years after its great achievement, 

 blinded by sectarian strife, continued like Samson of old, grind- 

 ing corn for others. 



Three attempts were made to unite the colleges in Ontario; and 

 three, if not four, types of union were considered. The first was 

 made in 1843 by Robert Baldwin, who introduced a Bill to unite 

 King's, Victoria, Queen's and Regiopolis, in a university like Oxford.^" 

 This university, to be called the University of Toronto, was to be 



39Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1876; University of Halifax. 1878. 

 "University of Toronto, p. 36. 



